


Empty, Unseen, and Preyed Upon

by engagemythrusters



Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M, Mystery, Supernatural Elements, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:20:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27315430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/engagemythrusters/pseuds/engagemythrusters
Summary: Torchwood ought to be more careful. Sometimes, things lurked in the darkness. And sometimes, those things bit back.
Relationships: Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones
Comments: 10
Kudos: 67
Collections: Torchwood Fan Fests: Halloween Fest 2020





	Empty, Unseen, and Preyed Upon

**Author's Note:**

> Based roughly and loosely on [a photo of GDL](https://twitter.com/Pancheers/status/1251319094495907842/photo/1) that I'd seen a while back and literally have never stopped thinking about.  
> Also, yes, it might be tagged that way for tagging purposes, but I refuse to call this a werewolf fic. He's not a werewolf. He's something like a werewolf. But not a werewolf. Okay?

Gwen took a tentative step forward, keeping her eyes locked on the figure hunched in the shadows.

“Ianto?” she said softly. “Ianto, it’s me. It’s Gwen.”

The creature snarled. She held her hands up in a placating manner, not letting her focus wander, not even when Jack groaned loudly behind her.

“I know you’re in there, Ianto,” she said. “I know you are. You’re a fighter. You wouldn’t let this beat you, would you?”

The thing bared its teeth again, but it didn’t lunge out of the darkness to tear her to shreds. She took that as a good sign, because she didn’t know what else to take it as.

“Come on. I know you’re in there” she repeated, soothing and gentle. “I know you don’t want to hurt me.”

Never mind that the thing had torn right through Jack.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw movement. Owen, armed with a syringe. Thank god for that, she thought. But just as Gwen had caught sight of him, so had the creature, and it snarled and snapped at Owen, lurching forward. Owen quickly scuttled backwards. Gwen darted in front of him, holding her arms out again at the beast.

“It’s alright! It’s alright—we’re not going to hurt you!”

She didn’t think it believed her, or possibly didn’t understand her. But Ianto, wonderful Ianto inside that creature, had to have a hand on the reins, because it backed away, one slow step by one slow step.

“That’s it,” she said, almost laughing in relief. “It’s alright. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”

Its retreating steps gradually halted, and she kept approaching. She saw the look in its fierce and vibrant eyes—cautious, shifty, ready to strike at any given moment. She didn’t expect it to let its guard down; it was enough that it was letting her closer. But she wished that the Ianto inside it could make itself known. She wanted his piercing blue gaze back, with all the understanding and certainty she’d grown so used to, though all she received was mistrust.

Perhaps the mistrust was rightfully earned, because the moment her hand was just a breath away from touching the coarse hair of the beast, Jack and Owen came barrelling forth, slamming the beast back into the wall. It bellowed angrily and agonisingly as it collided with the stone. Struggling, it tried to free itself, but Jack and Owen had it pinned down.

“Gwen, the syringe!” Owen shouted through gritted teeth.

She saw it, held precariously between two of Owen’s fingers. She stepped in beside him and prised it free, then hopped back again. The enraged creature gnashed its teeth wildly at her, and she stared straight back at it.

This thing had been Ianto… was it still Ianto? She swore Ianto had been in there. She could _feel_ it. A deep and unshakeable knowledge that Ianto was there. Maybe, if she just kept looking into those eyes, she could just catch a glimpse of that trust.

“Gwen, now!” Jack demanded.

Vivified by that, the creature’s head turned to Jack and bit at him. That was when Gwen threw caution to the wind. No Ianto Jones of any sort would ever bite at Jack. Sure, take a swipe at him if threatened like before, but never bite. Okay, alright, not like _that_. But that was well beyond point. Ianto would never willingly harm Jack.

This wasn’t Ianto. Not anymore.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered as she plunged the needle into the creature’s hairy neck.

* * *

* * *

**_The Past:_ **

Gwen tapped the pencil against her lips, staring vacantly at the computer in front of her. Her current task was to figure out how to badger Andy into getting the police off their backs for the parking tickets that Jack refused to admit he’d ever gotten. However, she had zoned out minutes ago before she could finish totalling up the charges. Her mind had gone absolutely blank. Christ, she hated maths.

The cog door hissed and began chugging open, and she looked over to it without much thought. Jack barged his way through, which wasn’t out of the ordinary. His demands for Owen, though, were more so.

Gwen sat up, pencil falling to her desk as she frowned at Jack. Owen’s footsteps sounded up from out of the autopsy room, until he stood in the threshold and folded his arms. Gwen paid him no heed, watching as Ianto and Toshiko emerged from the Hub’s entryway.

“What happened?” Gwen asked, on her feet the moment she saw the way Ianto cradled his arm to his chest with his other. “I thought you’d just gone out to fix—”

“Well, we were,” Tosh said, trailing up the steps behind Ianto, “but it turned out something had decided to chew its way through the wires.”

“And then me,” Ianto said.

His tone aimed for effortless and calm, though it missed by a mile in Gwen’s ears. She knew him well enough to hear the edge in his voice and the clenching in his jaw. That arm had to hurt.

“Brilliant,” Owen said. “Just when my night couldn’t get much worse, another Nostrovite had to show up.”

“Not again,” Gwen groaned. “It was bad enough the first time when—” She cut short. “Hang on, is he going to get pregnant?”

“It wasn’t a Nostrovite,” Jack said, just as Ianto’s eyes widened to the size of soup bowls.

“Well, what was it, then?” Owen asked.

Jack shook his head. “Not sure. Couldn’t see it. It was too dark.”

“Lovely,” Owen sighed. “Just what I wanted to spend my night doing: checking Ianto for rabies.”

Misery sure loved company, Gwen surmised to herself as Owen snatched Ianto’s good arm and dragged him into the depths of the autopsy bay. Or, at least, Misery made himself the company when he got fed up being alone.

“You didn’t see it at all?” she asked, turning back to Tosh and Jack.

“Nothing,” Tosh said, setting her coat aside and sitting down at her desk. “Whatever it was—it was fast.”

“Unloaded a clip into it, though,” Jack said. “Hopefully, that did something.”

Gwen supposed that was Torchwood all over. Couldn’t solve a problem? Just shoot it instead. Jack had once said he’d never shot a spider in the bath, though she grew to believe that less and less with every passing day.

“He’ll be fine,” Jack decided, apropos of nothing, then turned and stalked into his office.

Gwen shared a look with Tosh, unsure who he was trying to convince. Tosh shrugged after a moment, then turned and immediately dove into her work. Gwen herself sat back down at her desk. She picked up her pencil again and stared at the notepad.

Someone had put a coffee mug on top of this at one point, she realised. A few pages ago, the faint ring determined. Oops.

She found herself doodling around the coffee stain, absentminded little scribbles taking over the page. Christ, this was utterly dull. She dared not wish for excitement (knowing full well that was only an opening for trouble, with this job), but still… this was so _boring_.

Ianto fled from the autopsy room not an hour later. Gwen and Tosh both looked up expectantly at him, looking oddly bare with neither jacket nor waistcoat. He stood there for a second and fiddled with the bandage now swathed around his arm. Jack materialised in the doorway of his office, almost as if he’d been waiting and watching. Well, Gwen supposed that was likely the case. Owen also made his own appearance, ripping gloves from his hands.

“No rabies,” Owen said when Ianto failed to say anything for himself. “And nothing else unusual that I could find. He got lucky. Well, provided he doesn’t spill coffee on himself.”

“When have I ever—”

“So, he’s fine?” Jack asked, cutting over Ianto.

“Should be,” Owen said. “But that doesn’t mean he’s at peak performance. No funny business until it’s healed, you hear me, Harkness?”

Jack held up his hands in surrender. Ianto scowled. Tosh and Gwen shared another look, both suppressing smiles. Owen glared at Jack and Ianto a moment longer, then turned and headed back to the autopsy room without another word.

The four of them stayed there wordlessly for a few more moments. Then Ianto all but fled down the stairs to his coffee machine. Gwen and Tosh immediately returned to their work to avoid being told to do so, but Gwen secretly watched Jack watch Ianto. She could see Tosh do the same out of the corner of her eye.

Eventually, Jack seemed to get tired of brooding out in the open and retreated to his office to do so there.

Gwen finally got around to doing some of the required maths. It took a lot of sighing and poking around her doodles before she got there, but she did actually get there, and that was the main thing. She then switched to her computer and started inputting everything into the “possible Torchwood expenses” document Ianto had once set up for purposes like this. Anything that was bound to cost Torchwood money, but didn’t yet, went in that document. She fully expected to be copying and pasting everything into another document in a few hours—because, face it, Andy was not going to be able to convince _anyone_ to let Jack off easily—so she wasn’t sure why she was bothering.

She had just reached the last few charges when she heard a large crash from below. In an instant, she was on her feet, dashing to the railing and searching the rest of the Hub below for the commotion.

“Ianto?” she asked, spying him bent over by the coffee machine.

He straightened up. “It’s fine! Everything’s fine!”

“You sure?”

“Yep,” he said. He threw in a pacifying smile. “All good.”

Being as she was well-versed in his subtle, innocuous lies, she didn’t believe him. She folded her arms and watched as he ducked back down by the machine. He picked up a kettle and set it on the counter. Satisfied that he hadn’t done something to further injure himself, Gwen shrugged to herself and went back to her station.

She had only just dug out her mobile to phone Andy when Ianto came up with some a coffee. He placed it on Tosh’s desk, because she was far too absorbed in her work to look up and grab it herself. Gwen watched him descend the stairs for the coffee machine again (couldn’t very well carry his usual tray with his arm wrapped up). Either he would bring Jack’s next, or he would bring Gwen’s. She hoped it would be hers. They’d be up all night long. Seemed rather a few aliens loved to show up on full moons. She didn’t want to do it without coffee.

“Ah,” she said to herself, grinning as Ianto started back up the steps with her mug in hand.

He handed it to her, and she set aside her mobile to grab it willingly. When her fingers clamped around the mug, she could feel it shake.

“Are you alright?” she asked, putting the coffee down immediately to grab his hand.

He tried to pull his hand back. “I’m fine.”

“You don’t look alright,” she said, refusing to give up his hand. “You’re shaking and you’re pale and sweaty. You look _sick_.”

“I’m fine,” he repeated.

“Like hell you are—Owen?”

“What?” Owen called back from somewhere in the autopsy bay.

“Come here a minute.”

She could hear him grumbling quietly all the way up to the main section of the Hub.

“What?” he asked again when he appeared.

“Come and take a look at him,” she said, nodding up Ianto.

“Again?” But Owen stepped forward with no malice anyway. “Thought I told you not to spill coffee on yourself.”

“I didn’t,” Ianto said, annoyed.

Gwen placed Ianto’s hand in Owen’s awaiting one. Owen scowled immediately, then pressed a hand against Ianto’s forehead. Clearly peeved by this, Ianto sent Gwen an unimpressed look. She shrugged, only half-apologetic. If he wasn’t okay, Owen needed to check him over.

Owen withdrew his hand from Ianto’s forehead and said, “Christ.”

“I’m fine,” Ianto said automatically.

“You are not,” Owen countered. “You’re burning up.”

Ianto looked ready to protest again but didn’t. Smart move, Gwen thought.

“What’s wrong?”

Gwen twisted her head around to see Jack standing in the doorway to his office, his arms folded and his brows knit.

“Ianto’s sick,” she said.

“What?” Jack directed his frown to Owen. “You said he was fine.”

“Yeah, well, he was,” Owen said, though he sounded less sure now. “Everything read clear. Perfectly normal.”

“Ianto isn’t normally that pale,” Jack said.

“No, and he isn’t this shaky either.” Owen held up the hand he still held. The trembling was now just barely visible to the eye. “Nor is he this hot.”

“I’m standing right here,” Ianto said.

“Well, shift it,” Owen said, and he began to drag Ianto back to the autopsy room. “I’m getting to the bottom of this.”

Gwen found herself sharing yet another glance with Tosh. They each looked to Jack’s stony face and then back. Tosh gave a minute shrug, and Gwen returned one of her own. After a few more moments of shared sympathy, Tosh went back to work. Gwen sneaked another peek at Jack and considered offering up some of her coffee to him. No, no. She wanted that coffee. And besides, Jack had already stalked back off to his office without another word.

* * *

See, Gwen figured that Ianto would be sent home, should Owen have found him to be sick. Or perhaps watched over for the next few days until he felt better. She didn’t expect to wind up sitting in the conference room, sending quick glances across the room at Ianto, who stared blankly at the table in front of him.

“Okay,” Owen said, throwing a few things up on the projector. “So. Ianto.”

Ianto looked up, but then returned his eyes to the table when he realised he wasn’t being addressed.

“Turns out, he is actually very much not fine,” Owen said.

“So, you were wrong,” Jack said. The steely edge suggested that this meeting had better turn out more pleasantly than everyone was expecting, or else.

“No, I wasn’t,” Owen said. “I looked over those results again. Everything was normal. But…”

He pointed at some photo at the top of the screen. Gwen squinted at it for a second, but then gave up. She never could make heads nor tails of any chart or graph or photo Owen usually brought up, and she’d long since accepted this about herself. She’d just listen to whatever Owen had to say, try to make sense of that, and then have him rephrase it when that inevitably failed.

“That is far from normal,” Owen said, looking at all of them.

“What’s changed?” Jack asked. “Why is suddenly different?”

“I don’t know,” Owen said earnestly.

“Okay, but what is it?” Gwen asked, because nobody else was evidently going to do so. “What’s wrong with him?”

“Something is fundamentally restructuring Ianto’s DNA,” Owen said. “And at an exponential rate. It’s getting faster and faster.”

“Wait, what?” she asked.

“In a few hours, Ianto won’t be Ianto anymore.”

Silence descended on the conference room. Everyone’s eyes were on Ianto, who looked up at all of them and then back down to the table once more.

“Okay, but what is he changing into?” Gwen demanded. “How do we stop it?”

Owen was silent for a moment longer, and then quietly repeated, “I don’t know.”

“Well, figure it out,” Jack snapped.

“I’ve got Tosh running stuff through the database,” Owen said. “If it matches anything on there…”

“What if it doesn’t?” Gwen asked. “What then?”

Owen shrugged. “Then we’ll just have to figure something out.”

“Was it the thing that bit him?” Jack asked.

“Yes,” Owen said, huffing out a breath. “He came home dripping in saliva so I figured I’d look it over. And, well… it’s an exact match.”

“So whatever it was that bit him, Ianto’s turning into that,” Gwen clarified.

“Yes.”

“I’ve run through everything that changes its victims into itself,” Tosh said, “but I couldn’t find anything there. Our best bet is to wait for the search to finish up.”

“How long will that take?” Jack asked.

“Five, six more minutes?” she guessed.

A soft noise, one that was likely only audible due to the deadening silence of the conference room when nobody was speaking, came from Ianto’s area. All heads snapped instantly to him.

“Ianto?” Jack asked.

“I’m fine,” Ianto said, far too quickly.

“Bullshit,” Owen said. “You haven’t been fine in over half an hour. What is it?”

Ianto shifted in his seat. “It’s just… well, it’s like my skin is… burning.”

“Burning?”

“It itches,” Ianto said. He lifted a hand to the side of his face and rubbed. Then he winced, drawing his hand away and flexing it slowly. “And my bones ache.”

“Ache,” Owen parroted again.

“Or maybe it’s sharper than an ache,” Ianto said. “I’m not… I’m not sure.”

He was starting to look rather uncomfortable, Gwen noticed. He had been the entire meeting, she supposed, but perhaps what she’d read as discomfort for being discussed over his head was actually just the pain seeping through his otherwise stolid mask. Though it could have been a bit of both.

“When did this start?” Owen asked.

“It’s just been getting worse this entire time.”

“Why didn’t you say so?”

“Well, maybe because you’ve been so busy talking about me that you never bothered to consider me.”

Gwen blinked. The unusually irritated look on Ianto’s face stunned her. She caught Owen’s eye. He seemed equally taken aback.

Either Ianto was in a lot more pain than he let on, or something else was very, very wrong.

Christ, what was Ianto turning into?

“Okay,” Owen said, slowly, “why don’t you come with me to—”

“I’m tired of your stupid tests,” Ianto interrupted. “What’s the point of them? You don’t even know what’s wrong with me.”

“We’ll know more in a few more minutes,” Tosh said gently.

Ianto’s mouth opened to lash out at her, too, but then closed it. The irritation still sparked behind his eyes.

Gwen didn’t see why they couldn’t have had this meeting until all the tests and searches were finished, but… Torchwood liked a good dramatic reveal. They’d all rush down to Tosh’s computers the moment she said so, and then they’d peek at the results, and then they’d probably find—

Nothing.

Tosh’s searches had nothing.

“Perfect,” Ianto said. He had his hands on his hips, brows furrowed deeply. Gwen wanted to reach out and pat his shoulder, but she could practically feel the vexation rolling off him yet, so she restrained herself. “So, not only do we not know what I’m becoming, we now can’t stop it.”

“We can stop it,” Jack said. “We’ll figure something out. We always do.”

“Do we?” Ianto demanded.

Gwen stared at him, shocked. Ianto was never this… _angry_.

“Do we always figure something out?” he went on. “I thought we just fumbled our way blindly through the dark, passing off accidental and temporary stopgaps as fixes, ignoring lost lives for the idea of some greater good.”

The four of them found themselves without anything to say. Ianto’s eyes hunted them down individually, rage still evident. What was he so angry about? It couldn’t be this… Gwen knew Ianto. She had a fairly good idea how he’d react when given a dire situation like this. He’d put on a show, a stiff upper lip, and brew a last good and hot cup of coffee for himself. No matter what emotions would whirl around inside him, he would appear nothing more than resigned to his fate. (Which terrified her, sometimes, how easily he could act that way.)

Before anyone could begin to work out what to do next, what to _say_ next, Ianto let out a sharp cry and clutched his hands to his face.

“Ianto?” Jack asked.

He reached out to Ianto, but the moment his hand touched Ianto’s shoulder, Ianto wrenched himself away.

“Don’t touch me!”

Jack drew back in an instant. Gwen could see the emotions flash across his face: startled, confused, hurt.

Ianto pulled his face from his hands. Gwen started, horrified. His face was… blurry.

No, no.

Not blurry. Fuzzy. _Hairy_.

“Jesus Christ,” Owen said. Gwen felt much the same. “Okay, Ianto? You need to calm down.”

“Don’t tell me to calm down,” Ianto said through clenched teeth.

If Gwen had any questions leftover doubt about the anger and the pain, that sentence ended it. Between the strained tone barely contained the raw agony and the near hatred that came in the way he spat it out, Gwen’s worries doubled. Especially when his fingers started raking up and down his own forearms, as if to tear the skin away. Actually…

“Jesus!” Gwen exclaimed.

“Ianto, stop!” Jack shouted.

Ianto’s nose crinkled into something that resembled a sneer. Or perhaps a snarl, with the way his lips curled back. But his fingers didn’t stop tearing at his sleeve and bandage, until they ripped away to reveal more hair. Thick, coarse hair of some deep colour Gwen’s human eyes couldn’t pinpoint. Ianto’s fingers, slowly tinging the same colour and… oh, god, they were visibly _growing_. Growing and curling and sharpening into some horrific claw-like digits. It was absolutely disturbing to watch.

“Ianto!” Jack yelled again as the fabric of Ianto’s shirt tore further. “Stop!”

He grabbed one of Ianto’s hands and yanked it away. Owen quickly jumped in, too, and pulled the other arm away. Ianto, in some violent fit of rage, tried to shake himself free of them. He let out a short, frenzied shout, exhibiting perfectly the new, long, jagged points to his teeth. 

Gwen had never been more afraid for Ianto in her life. Afraid _of_ him, even.

Tosh, quicker in thinking and swifter on her feet, grabbed a scanner from her desk, waving it at Ianto as Jack and Owen attempted to stop Ianto from ripping himself to shreds. Gwen felt frozen in place. All she could do was stand still and observe in horror as her friend turned into some beastly creature.

“Agh!”

Jack’s cry startled Gwen, even though she’d watched Ianto’s now fully formed claws swipe at his face. Blood speckled down from his nose. This served to distract both Owen and Jack, whether Ianto had intended this or not, and Ianto managed to prise himself free. Tosh stumbled backwards, trying to escape before he had the chance to lunge at her. She collided into Gwen, and the two of them fell back into Tosh’s desk.

Ianto snarled—really, Gwen could call that a true snarl, one worth of some brute of a canid—down at the two of them, but instead of attacking them like Gwen had for a split second feared, he fled. He tore down the stairs, to the cog door, and escaped.

Gwen and Tosh untangled themselves as speedily as possible. Jack was already on his feet, hot on Ianto’s heels. Owen sprinted to the autopsy bay. Tosh gave Gwen a quick look; Gwen nodded and took off after Jack. Behind her, she knew Tosh had turned to her computers to gather what she could from the scans she just collected.

Ianto had evidently stolen the lift up, leaving Jack and Gwen only the of dozens of dozens of stairs. Gwen spared half a thought to complain internally about the depth of the stupid bloody sci-fi fanatic base.

The door of the tourist centre had been all but torn from its hinges. Jack paid it no heed, running through it without even sparing it a glance. But it scared the shit out of Gwen. Just how strong was Ianto now?

The moon hung high and bright out over the waters of the bay. The cloudy day had worn away into a night worthy of some astronomer’s keen eye. Gwen would stop and appreciate its splendour, had she the time. She didn’t, though; she had only enough time to give it a brief peek before nearly colliding into Jack’s back as he skid to a halt.

On the boardwalk, light by the lamps and the moon, lie a person.

Ianto.

Or… not Ianto.

The body wasn’t human anymore. It had grown by at least a half and was covered from head-to-toe in that dark, coarse hair. The face had elongated to accommodate a snout, complete with fangs protruding from its ghastly lips. Its shoulders seemed to naturally furl over slightly in a hunch, which was likely what had accidentally caused the creature to pop through Ianto’s clothes.

Gwen stooped to grab the tie (Ianto _loved_ that tie), but Jack’s clamped a firm hand on her shoulder and rooted her in place. She glanced up at him. The moonlight chiselled the lines of his face into something grim and foreboding.

“What the hell?” Owen had caught up with them, stopping on the other side of Jack. He caught his breath as he stared down at the creature, looking as horrified as Gwen felt. “How did—”

“No idea,” Jack said. “I didn’t see it happen.”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Gwen said. “It was so slow at first… and then all of the sudden he’s just… this!”

“I did say ‘exponentially,’” Owen reminded her.

“Can we change him back?” Gwen asked, peering across Jack at him.

Owen sighed, holding up a syringe. “Well, the most I can do right now is—”

He cut off as the creature stirred. Jack’s hands instantly shot out, pushing Gwen and Owen back and away from it.

The creature slowly got to its feet. Jack just kept walking Gwen and Owen back slowly, getting them a safer distance away. But then it turned and spotted them. The three of them stopped and stood stock-still as it stared them down with wild, beastly eyes.

“Owen,” Jack murmured lowly, “take its left. Gwen, the right.”

“What about you?” Gwen hissed. “Ianto’s in there—you can’t hurt it!”

“Who said anything about hurting Ianto?” Jack asked.

The vagueness of that worried her for a second. But only for a second.

The creature fled.

Jack shoved Gwen and Owen in their respective directions, urging them into action, but neither of them had been expecting it. Gwen ricocheted into one of the posts holding the chain-link, while Owen tripped and fell. His syringe went flying backwards on the boardwalk. Jack ignored both of them, taking after the thing.

Gwen was scrambling Owen’s aid when Jack engaged with the creature.

“I’m fine!” Owen said as she helped him to his feet. “Go help Jack!”

As if on cue, Jack let out a roar of pain. Gwen let go of Owen and whirled around, only to watch Jack collapse backwards onto the boardwalk. Dead? Maybe. Gwen couldn’t tell from quick glance—she was more absorbed in the creature, which had fled into the shadows by the wall. Whatever it had done to Jack, Jack must’ve been able to retaliate enough to wound or scare it.

Gwen took a tentative step forward, keeping her eyes locked on the figure hunched in the shadows.

“Ianto?” she said softly. “Ianto, it’s me. It’s Gwen.”

* * *

* * *

**_The Present:_ **

This wasn’t Ianto. Not anymore.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered as she plunged the needle into the creature’s hairy neck.

With a wounded howl, it whipped its head back towards her.

She had a brief moment of eye contact with it once more. Maybe more than brief. It felt like a whole eternity in that second, where Gwen watched the rage and fury and hatred strip away from the set of eyes staring into hers. Behind the anger lie fear, and beyond the fear was—

“Ianto?” she breathed.

Then those eyes slid shut, and the creature slumped forward in Jack and Owen’s arms. She caught its massive, furred head as it fell.

For a moment, the three of them merely stood there, holding the thing up.

Gwen didn’t know what to believe. On one hand, it had tried to hurt Jack twice. The first time may have been in self-defence, but that second time… That wasn’t Ianto. But she could have sworn, just for an infinitesimal fraction of a second when she’d stuck him with the syringe, she could see… _trust_.

So… maybe there was hope yet. Maybe whatever she’d just dosed him with would bring him back.

“What was in that?” Gwen asked. “The cure?”

“A sedative,” Owen said.

“Oh.”

Well. Then maybe when Owen _did_ find a cure, Ianto would come back. Gwen didn’t want to give up on Ianto just yet.

“Come on,” Jack said. His tone was stony. “Let’s get it to the cells.”

Between the three of them, they somehow managed to half-drag, half-carry what used to be Ianto down to the vaults. They deposited it in a cell and locked it in, then stared at it through the glass. Tosh joined them eventually.

“Still nothing from the scans,” she said quietly. “At least, nothing on the computers.”

“Could you try the Archives?” Gwen suggested when Jack said nothing.

“I suppose,” Tosh said, though she sounded doubtful.

“Not everything made it to the digital files.”

“Yeah.”

Tosh stared at the creature in the cell for a while longer, then turned and left quietly. Her subtle form of fleeing. Nobody could blame her. It wasn’t nice to see a colleague in this sort of situation. Certainly not when said colleague was also a good friend. And now a beastly creature.

“Right. Well,” Owen said when she’d gone. “That should be enough to keep it out until morning.”

“How much was in that?” Gwen asked.

“As much as the best sedatives Torchwood can make.” Owen sighed. “Speaking of which… best go see what I can do to fix the teaboy.”

Without another word, he disappeared from the corridor.

Jack stayed put. He hadn’t moved an inch since they’d shut the beast inside the cell, staring fixedly down at its prone form. Gwen figured he’d be there a while longer.

She herself went and sat down on the ground, resting her back on the far wall. She’d stay here all night, with Jack. Rhys would understand when she told him why she didn’t come home. Rhys had heard all about Ianto. He knew what Ianto meant to her. What he meant to everyone.

Jack left after about an hour of standing cross-armed and staring blank-faced. She didn’t know where he was going. She didn’t ask. Odds were, he was either out to hunt down the first creature or to stand on a roof for a good brood for a while. Either would clear his head. Though she’d like to believe Ianto would’ve wanted brooding over vengeance any time. But maybe that was just her own fond wishes.

It got cold in the cells at night. Gwen found herself rubbing her arms to keep warm during the times she was awake. The rest of it, she dosed fitfully. She wasn’t leaving the creature—or Ianto—but she didn’t need to stay awake for it, either. Besides, it wasn’t as if the thing was doing anything. They could both sleep.

Owen came down twice while she was awake. He didn’t say anything to her, not even to comment on the way her fringe looked like it got swept through a tropical storm, or something. No, they just caught the other’s eye solemnly. Owen nodded the once.

Neither of them liked this one bit.

Jack returned around five in the morning. Gwen didn’t ask where he’d gone. He didn’t say. It worked well for them both.

“He’ll be fine,” Gwen said after a while.

Jack still said nothing.

When Gwen’s legs started to go numb from the sitting on the cold, hard floor, she stood and strolled down to the rest of the cells. Most were empty. Janet’s wasn’t.

“I suppose Ianto can’t bring you your breakfast today, can he?” Gwen murmured, mostly to herself and not the Weevil. “That’ll be my job…”

What else would she have to pick up, until they could fix Ianto?

“Gwen?”

Gwen’s musings paused as she turned back around and looked down the hall at Jack. He’d stopped his brooding stance and had moved up to the perspex, pressing his hands against the pane and frowning down through it.

“Jack?” she called back.

“Come here.”

Within an instant, she returned to his side.

“Oh my god,” she said, peering into the cell. “I’m not imagining that, am I?”

“Well, unless we both ate something funny…” Jack said, not looking away from the creature.

The beast was rapidly changing. The form was turning a more natural shape as the snout shrank back in and the hunch straightened out. The hair looked like it was growing inwards. It was a bit disturbing to watch, Gwen thought. But she couldn’t look away. She knew what was happening; she had to see it.

“Oh, he’s…”

“Naked?”

“Very,” Gwen said, and then turned her eyes elsewhere.

When Jack didn’t do likewise, she smacked him.

“Hey! It isn’t like this is new for me,” Jack said.

“He’s sleeping!”

“Still not new.”

Ianto groaned. She heard him shift around, possibly sitting up, but she dared not turn back to look.

“What… Jack?” Ianto asked. “What am I doing here? Where are my clothes?”

“Oh, shit,” Gwen mumbled to herself. She hoped the tie hadn’t blown into the bay overnight.

“Good morning,” Jack said, sounding a thousand times lighter than he had all night. “How’d you sleep?”

“Horribly. I feel like I’ve just—Hang on. I was turning into a… something.”

“You _did_ turn into a something,” Gwen said.

“Unless that something was a nudist, I don’t seem to have changed much.”

“Well, I’m not sure big hairy creatures can qualify as nudists,” Jack said, “but I suppose if they knew the right people…”

“I was a _what_?”

Thundering footsteps approached. As they belonged to someone likely fully clothed, Gwen looked over. Tosh and Owen came running down the cell block to them.

“Ianto!” Tosh cried.

“Um,” Ianto said behind Gwen. “Hello…”

Owen seemed less pleased. “That’s _it_?”

* * *

* * *

**_The Future:_ **

That was, in fact, not it.

Ianto sat on the autopsy table, jacket, shirt, and tie all folded neatly in a pile at the edge. Gwen was wiping at a small space of his skin, cleaning it before the injection.

“I can do it myself,” Ianto said.

“No, you can’t,” Gwen said. She tossed the wipe in the bin. “Remember last time? Stabbed the wrong place.”

“I was fine.”

“You got blood on my shoes.”

Ianto frowned at her.

“They were good shoes,” she said.

He didn’t stop frowning at her. She ignored it, because she wouldn’t relent. She wasn’t Owen (and no one could ever replace him), but she was better than Ianto was at stabbing a needle into Ianto.

“Right, where’s Jack?” she asked.

“Here,” Jack said.

Gwen and Ianto both glanced up at the autopsy entrance, where Jack had just come through. He leant against the railing, looking down upon them.

“Almost ready?” Jack asked. “It’s nearing sundown.”

“Someone won’t let me do my job,” Gwen said.

Ianto rolled his eyes.

After a few more months of random days with Ianto suddenly becoming rather violent and hairy, Owen had finally figured out a few important things. They still knew nothing about what he became, but they knew how to make the shifts easier. Every twenty-nine and a half days (Owen had roughly calculated), they’d shoot Ianto up with some serum Owen had created to both soothe the growing pains and calm the raging beast.

Each time, Ianto burned and ached less and less, and each time, Ianto was in control more and more. They were at half the dosage Owen had originally prescribed, and slowly working their way down to nil.

“Okay, hold still,” Gwen said.

“I am still.”

“Your lips aren’t.”

“You’re not injecting my lips, you’re—ow.”

“Serves you right,” she said. “You were moving.”

Ianto frowned at her, rubbing the injection site after she withdrew the needle.

“All set,” she said, safely disposing of the needle. “One calm, painless Ianto.”

“Great,” Jack said.

“I’ll have Andy keep Bute Park clear this time,” she said. “Weevils are particularly nasty there this week.”

“I thought we’d hit up Splott,” Jack said.

“People will see me,” Ianto said.

“Well, I can get the collar and leash from—”

“Okay, I think that’s me done for the night,” Gwen said loudly, gathering her things to go. “You boys have a lovely evening. Don’t forget to put your trousers on before I get back in the morning.”

“It was one time!” Ianto called after her as she ascended the stairs.

“Twice!”

“That time didn’t count!”

“Goodnight!” she called, and then headed out the cog door.

(The next morning, she’d walk in and immediately have to inform the press that a rabid wolf had run loose in Splott, but it was fine; all was taken care of now. But for the moment, she was going home to Rhys and ignoring the news.)

**Author's Note:**

> God, I'd started out with a plan, but then it turned into a mess and stayed that way. I'm so sorry.  
> No, it is absolutely NOT edited.  
> Thank you for reading! Have a happy Halloween!


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